Origins
by chronic nymph
Summary: She watched the color bleed out of his skin and out of his eyes and out of his hair; white and blue and gold. This was not her child, the child she knew, the child born onto her shores and into her arms. The green-eyed monster from across the seas had come and stolen him away.
1. born of my flesh

a/n. ive always wanted to explore the relationship b/t first people nations and the english in the context of hetalia and so i did and so i have and so here it is. its going to be at least two parts, hopefully three; one more from england's perspective and then one from america's. reviews are nice &amp; make me feel good abt myself ;)

* * *

_He had been born from her own ocean womb, she had given birth to him there on the sand, she had found him crawling when his skin had glowed fresh like a chestnut and his eyes had been dark like rich new earth and she taken him to her breast and suckled him on her great rivers, her lifesblood. Her love for him had taught her to speak in all of the many tongues of her peoples, tongues that had lived for so long silently in her heart, and she had sung to him the songs of her children and she had wanted to give him everything, all of her rich, endless country, but not like this._

_She looked at the blood that poured from her mouth and dripped sluggishly onto the soil, watched as the earth sucked it up like rain after a draught, felt the terror and pain of her children as they screamed and screamed and died, looked up into eyes that were beautiful and blue and so terribly foreign to her and __thought, no, not like this._

* * *

She was the one who had discovered him; before the pale faced one had come with his envy-green eyes and his sharp, chameleon smile and his God and his guns, she had been his Mother.

Before she found him there among the rocks - as if he had been born from the sea, like she had, like the myths of her many peoples - she had been alone. Her solitude, like her country, was vast and rich and wild. She stretched from horizon to horizon, ocean to ocean, cradled the sun when it set and when it rose. Hundreds of rivers and creeks flowed through her veins, some raging and wild, others placid and still and calm; her great jagged mountains stretched the smooth skin over her spine, mirrored the ridges of each vertebrae; her deserts gave her skin its rich reddish gold color; her endless grasslands fell in long straight tendrils over her shoulders, smooth and silky and black as night. She was tall and regal and elegant, and she was silent; she did not need words when her arms could reach across the world.

It wasn't that she _couldn't _speak; her mind was abuzz with the many languages of her many people; Cherokee, Iroquois, Apache, Hopi... Endless tongues and she was master of them all. But her silence lay in her solitude. She did not attempt to meet her neighbors; the winter child to the North and the jungle warrior to the South - they respected her borders, and she theirs. She would see them sometimes from the tallest perches she could find; her Evergreens, or her mountaintops, would watch the little boy in the snow, wrapped in furs, or the broad, rippling shoulders of the man standing atop his great pyramids. Yes, sometimes she watched, but that was all and never for long. It was her own land that interested her, and her own peoples, she did not need to look beyond the world encompassed within herself.

Her peoples, whose lives gave her heart its steady rhythm. They were fractured; there were many tribes that lived within her borders, and all of them where her _ka'êškóneho_. She had lived among them once when she was small, before her first blood (the first blood that had touched her _ma¶a_, that she had felt seep like a wound from between her legs and she had cried and she had become a woman to the screams of the first who had died violently in her country). She had danced around their fires at night and listened to their stories about a world born from nothingness, born from vast oceans, born from darkness. She had drifted from one tribe to another to learn their individual histories and traditions and she had loved them all.

And her love for them had driven her away deep into her forests and her mountains, because when they warred against each other, her heart would seize with pain and sorrow. She knew now that this was simply the nature of human beings, that all of their wonderful differences inevitably clashed, and they were so simple and so small, and violence came so naturally to them. She supposed it came naturally to everything; she watched mother bears devour their cubs when seasons were bad, and she knew that this world was as vicious as it was beautiful.

They knew her now as their first mother, and so she was, distant but omnipresent. She kept her eye on them, of course, because she loved them still, but from afar. She felt the pain of their wars, and when she did she ran further into herself, into her caves and her forests and her mountains, into her deserts, into her inarable wastelands. She walked from coast to coast, brushing her hands across every rock, learning the rough surfaces of every tree, naming every plant and animal that crossed her path and that lived and died within her bosom. She drifted to sleep listening to the stories of her people, smiling, comforted that they still held her close to their hearts and to their spirits. She flew on the wind, strong, impenetrable, silent, and alone.

* * *

She found him newly born up North along her Eastern most coast where the wind stung sharply and the sea churned, a violent, gray unknowable thing that foamed and spat and offered up this strange childling from deep within. He looked at first like any one of her children, dark-skinned with tufts of silky black hair upon his head; but she knew that he was not a mortal child the moment she saw him. His eyes betrayed what his tiny body did not; they were like her eyes, black dark and yet bright like the moon, endless, old.

She watched him crawl from the sea, her feet sunk ankle-deep in the sand, and was overwhelmed with a wave of nauseous inexplicable dread. Like the sages of her people, her eyelids fluttered prophetically; she shuddered with the bone deep knowledge that this child harbored great change, and it set her on edge like nothing else in her long existence had before.

He saw her, his black eyes fixed upon where she stood very still, and his mouth opened silently and he began to crawl towards her; she watched how the sand parted under his little fists and cushioned his knees and felt the sudden bloodthirsty temptation to bash his brains upon the rocks, a feeling tempered only by the urge to flee into her forests. He had been born from her seas and her land rippled around him, familiar, doting, and she could not understand what her instincts felt from the very beginning: that this child's life would be her ruin, that his very existence demanded hers (_sacrifice, retribution)_. She wavered there on the shore, conflicted, watching his slow unsteady approach and trying to decide what was to be done, suppressing this sick foreboding that made her throat tighten and her breath come quick and harsh. She would throw him back into the ocean from whence he'd come, let him drown in the embryonic fluid that had cast him out onto her soil -

But then he let out a cry, a quiet, keening wail and she swore she _felt _it like the cries of her children and her bloodthirst stuttered uncertainly and then faded into pity and then dismissal. (After all, what was there to be afraid of? What was death to one such as herself? And what could an infant possibly do to her? She could not die. These lands could not perish; they would not sink into the sea or crumble into ash. She was strong.) She forced her limbs to move, to overcome the wary resistance that she could not name, that she steadily shook off with every step. It was just a child, a child of her country - so, then, it was her child.

She took him in her arms and felt his warmth seep into her bones and listened to him hum and coo and his little hands dragged sand through her hair and onto her cheeks where he touched her, fascinated, his eyes wide and full of wonder and love. All thoughts of infanticide evaporated (they would never return, not once, even when the color bleached out of his skin and his teeth turned sharp and he looked at her and said, "heathen") and she held him to her chest and hummed low in her throat, swayed with the breeze that tickled them both. Her initial reaction was quickly forgotten; she breathed in his smell, new; he smelled like her oceans, he smelled like her own. (_She should never have wrapped her arms around him; she should have never touched him, because when she did, she loved him, was bewitched and blinded and undone._)

"Born of my flesh," she said, breaking an eon-long silence, and he stole her words with a sloppy infant kiss before she had even heard the sound of her own voice.

* * *

"They are your children?"

They sat perched upon a high cliff, looking out over the plains that dominated the middle of her country, far from the seas where he had been born. He had grown into a toddler who could walk on his own feet, who watched the world with rabid curiosity, a curiosity so intense and probing that at times it frightened her. She did not question anymore where he had come from or why he was here or what nation he would grow into. Her love blinded her to any possible danger. She was certain now that his destiny was to inherit her world from her when the time was right; when her children grew strong and many and came together, learned to temper their violence with their passionate loving human hearts. Her heart swelled with pride when she thought about the future she envisioned for him, when she looked at him and thought of the powerful man he would grow into, the feathers she would braid into his long dark hair, the paint he would wear around his eyes.

She nodded her head and carded her long brown fingers through his hair. "Some of them. These are the buffalo hunters, see." She gestured far at the nearby herd. "There are many more, all of them different. Some hunt fish, grow food from the earth." She closed her eyes and felt the sun and her son pressed against her side. "There are many, they are all my children."

He turned his beautiful, terrifying eyes to her and took her hand, jealously gripping it tight. He was a mercurial child, tempestuous at times, but he loved her dearly. (_Don't you love me? Your Mother?_) "Then what am I?"

She eased him with her smile, slow and lovely and full of warmth. Her arms wrapped around him and brought him up roughly so that he squealed and squirmed and giggled, kicking his naked little feet while she placed loud kisses on his face and bit the shell of his ear gently.

They sobered after a moment of tender tussling, and she smoothed his dark, curly hair and said, "They are my children, but they were not born of my body - " And she took his hand and laid it flat agains the rock beneath them so that he could feel her pulse running through it. "They are born of each other, and that is why they live amongst themselves - "

"Is that why they die?" His expression was very serious. He had seen it, of course he had, had seen all the myriad of ways that human beings could die. He had watched his mother's face twist in pain when the humans warred amongst themselves, when they stole from and murdered and enslaved on another, had seen her sweat at night when a fever would ravish one or two of the tribes; and he had felt it himself too, but never as strongly, as intimately as she did.

She nodded. "Yes. They die. But you…" And she cupped his face and her breath whispered around them, picking up and tousling their long hair together, blowing across the great flatness of the plains. "You are a part of me, born of this land. When you grow up, you will become their father, and they will be your children, and this - " The rock beneath their hands felt warm and alive. "Will be your body."

He grasped handfuls of her hair in his small determined fists with sudden fear. "But what about you?"

And she smiled and shrugged because she did not know, and it did not bother her, not anymore. The old, first fear she had felt when she found him on her beaches had been smothered by her great love for him. He pushed their foreheads together and said fiercely, with more power than his little body should have possessed, "I will not let you die! You can never leave me!" (And at the time his ferocity had endeared him to her and she had admired his spirit, strong like her warrior children, strong and loyal and true.)

She took his hands gently from her hair and once again pressed them to the cliffside, trying to impress upon him this most elementary lesson, of the sacred body, of the _land_. "I will never leave you, _cinks_." And then she smiled and teased him softly, "But you might leave me, once you grow up big and strong! Leave your old _unitsi_ behind you." And he looked at her with great skepticism and scoffed and settled in her lap.

The wind blew and they watched the buffalo hunters and she rested her chin on the top of his head, content.

_Are you leaving me? My son?  
__You are no Mother of mine. _

* * *

The Pale ones came.  
The Others in their great ships from across the sea. She felt them come, and when they landed on her shores she was there with her son at her side, watching from the tree line, her eyes hard. She felt him moving uneasily beside her, shifting his weight from foot to foot and casting nervous glances up into her stony face. He had never seen her so still. Then he turned his eyes to the white sails on the horizon, and they watched the approach together in silence. She felt old fear, fear she thought had long since died, crawl slowly up her back. She remembered her son emerging from the sea, and he had been so beautiful and she had felt so horrified.

The men rowed their little boats onto the beaches, the great ships anchored farther out. She narrowed her eyes. They came out of the sea, but they were not beautiful, and she felt rage now, not horror. Rage, because she could feel their intentions the second they stepped onto her soil, felt the poison of their foreign ways, their greed, their lust for her, for what she could provide for them, felt the venom seep into the sand under their feet.

"Who are they?" His voice broke the silence of her angry thoughts; she looked down at him, examining his expression from where it peeked out from behind her leg. He was a shy thing around humans, usually, but there was an excited glimmer in his eyes that made her wary.

"I don't know."

_They came out from the water._

The man who led them was one of her kind; she recognized him the same way she had recognized the child that day so many years ago. He led his children with confidence, bearing with him a sharpened spear bearing a flag. _Red white and blue._ He speared the pole into the ground and she didn't have to understand his language to know he was laying claim to her shores, to _her. _She felt the violation deep in her gut, and it was a disgusting feeling. Her lips curled back over her teeth. The man was short (she could have laughed; he might have barely come up to her collarbone, about eye level with her chest), and he had dusty pale hair, and his eyes were green, green like the snake who devours, ravenous like the wolf. There was a power radiating from him that made her clench her teeth and squeeze the boy's hand, a power she had never encountered before, a power that was different from her vast lands and her tall mountains and her harsh deserts. It was the power of men, of greed, of war. This nation was neck deep in it, in the violence that she had for so long resisted, that she had alienated herself from her children because of.

She remembered her first blood and wondered how it had been for this pale nation; she had a feeling he hadn't fled into the wilderness. She had a feeling he had bathed in it and laughed.

"Who is that?" her son asked in his eager, excited whisper. "That one! That one! He's like us, isn't he?" His fear had abated, shyness corroding under his excitement. "So different..." His dark eyes were wide, captivated by that hideous green. She looked down at him and felt old, old dread. "Look at him, _Ina_, look. His _eyes - _" He was utterly bewitched.

"He is not like us."

She turned her back on the beach where the green eyed nation was laughing among his children like he was one of them, grinning huge and predatory as he surveyed his discovery. She pulled gently on her son's hand. "_Hao_." He hesitated, his eyes fixated on Green Eyes, but she tugged again and he followed her obediently. She was not afraid; she was vast, and she was dense, and she was dangerous. She would leave the pale men to her children to deal with as they pleased, and she would avoid the Other nation entirely, retreating deeper into her country until he and his kind left. She was too great to be threatened by petty foreign nations and their insolence and their flags.

She did not notice how her son's eyes peered persistently over his shoulder, curious, his hand twitching longingly in hers like he wanted to pull away and investigate further (or maybe she did, but she pretended not to, because she did not want to notice)._  
_

* * *

_unitsi - _mama in cherokee  
_cinks _\- my son, lakota  
_ina - _mother, lakota  
_ma¶a - _earth, dakota  
_ka'êškóneho _\- children, cheyenne  
_hao _\- come, oneida

if ive made any mistakes w/ the languages pls let me kno c:


	2. my name is alfred

a/n. so i was editing this chapter on the doc manager and made all these changes and added things AND THEN i guess the server went down and i lost it all. so i rewrote it but im sure it's not as good/authentic as it was before and anyway im afraid this chapter wont be as good bc i always lose momentum on these things and its four in the morning and ive been writing my theory paper all night and ugh ugh everythings wrong anyway enjoy i guess. ps reviews are gold. pps. idk why but ive been really into parenthesis in this story lol loves it ;)

* * *

_The air is thick with smoke; it coils in his lungs and sears his throat and the stench of it makes his stomach roll he is crying crying he doesn't understand why this is happening, why is this happening - His Mother's children had been sleeping. The fire smolders and burns and Alfred moans, dropping to his knees, clutching his chest no this is never what he wanted he never wanted no - His ears are filled with the screams of his Mother's children, the men cut down their blood wetting the earth and the earth is thirsty for it because it doesn't belong to her anymore, it belongs to England now and England is thirsty for the blood of brown men. He watches the men as their throats are cut to the bone, the women as they are wrestled to the ground, shrieking in a different kind of pain, their screams breaking in terror as Arthur's children laugh and pull their hair and climb on top of them, shoving their faces into the dirt where they choke on the dust while their babies are tossed crying into the flames. His Mother's children do not burn like kindling, they bubble and pop and blacken like meat on a spit. Alfred rocks and moans and it hurts, hurts in his chest, his skin is hot and his head is full of their voices as they die and across the flames he sees his Mother standing tall and still but her shoulders are hunched and when she wails it drowns out all of the others and he tries to reach for her but she is gone and Arthur's hand is clasped hard on his shoulder, holding him down on his knees. _

_"Don't worry, lad," he says and his voice is light and his eyes are half lidded, lazy, sated like a snake bloated on a recent meal and the night is quiet now, quiet like the dead and the smoke has covered the stars and Alfred is left with nothing but the stench in his nostrils which will linger for weeks - "We'll bleed them out of you soon enough. Every last drop of them."_

* * *

For a long time, he heeds his Mother's warnings and keeps his distance from the newcomers on the eastern beach. He lingers along the jagged rocks along the tree line (where the pale faced strangers do not come except for with their axes to take down his Mother's cedars so they can build walls and buildings and tall, heavy crosses that intimidate him for reasons he does not understand) and he keeps himself hidden at his Mother's request, and he watches.

He does not understand why his Mother refuses to accompany him, why when he asks her about the strangers she turns her face away so that he cannot see the anger in her eyes (but of course he sees it, and he shrinks from her, and she does not try to comfort him). She has retreated far into the forests where the strangers dare not venture; her anger permeates the woods like fog so that the strangers whisper among themselves of evil spirits and devils dwelling in the trees, in the dark. He returns to her at night to sleep and she lets him curl up against her breast like always, but he is restless now. He cannot sleep easily, his dreams are filled with sandy hair and billowing white sails, his mind is so full of questions and curiosities, and he is haunted by bright green eyes. He could have sworn that first day they arrived that the man had seen through the darkness, had seen him, had seen into him and had smiled. He twists and turns during the nights until his Mother's arms retreat from around him, until she rolls over in her sleep so her back faces him and her face is hidden by her long curtain of beautiful hair (black like night, shining like the gloss of the moon on water, rippling with every breath, she is so lovely - it will be a long time before he realizes how beautiful she once was).

He stills, suddenly cold without her, and then he raises himself to his feet and goes sprinting on the winds back to the beach. (He has learned this habit from her - running from the things he does not want to face.) He loves his Mother, he does, but he is bored with her stony silence and her isolation, and he is hurt by the cold look that her eyes now hold. Her eyes, which are so dark, just like his. He rides the winds like she has taught him, his dancer's feet barely touching the ground until he stops, breathless, and crouches in the rocks along the beach.

Green Eyes is waiting for him.

He is standing at the edge of the shore, barefooted, looking out towards the sea. His back is very straight, his hands curled into fists and resting on his hips. His blond hair is ruffled by the wind (his Mother's wind, her easy even breaths, asleep). When he had first landed, he was dressed in silver metal that gleamed, but now he wears rough, casual wear. Breeches made of cloth instead of animal hide, stopping at his knee, safe from the lazy reach of the tide. There is something terribly lethally beautiful about him. From behind the rock, the Son clenches and unclenches his fists, breathing shallow, muscles coiled tight like springs.

Green Eyes turns slowly, and his gaze finds him where he his hidden, only his eyes and the top of his head peeking out from over the rocks. He shouldn't be able to see him in the dark, but the Son knows that he does, and he crouches frozen, locked in by those eyes, falling into them, drowning in them. The stranger's smile is slow and predatory. His fingers scrabble nervously against the rock.

The stranger's voice is smooth like the pebbles at the bottoms of his Mother's rivers, smooth and it lulls him even though he cannot understand the words. He doesn't need to; he knows that he is being beckoned out by the way Green Eyes holds out his hand and begins to walk up the beach, his steps slow (like a cat stalking something small and weak and stupid, all smiles, all teeth) and careful on the sand (and the sand does not part for him; he sinks a little clumsily into it; he is not born of this country, he is not welcomed here by this land). "Come out," he says, and the Son does not understand but he repeats the strange words over in his head, and he likes how they sound on the stranger's tongue, he likes everything about this stranger.

But he thinks of his Mother, lying asleep, and how she had held him and whispered, "He is not like us. He is not of us, he has come here for evil things," and it frustrates him because he does not understand what evil motives this beautiful stranger might have. He does not understand his Mother's fear, or her anger, or her flight into the darkness. He does not want to stay hidden. _(You hide because you're weak, you're weak and this land is mine now, mine to inherit and I will take it because I am strong now, stronger than you, better, you are no Mother of mine - )_

"Come out," Green Eyes says again, and his voice is still quiet but there is a hardness to it, a command that has the Son's body moving on its own, unfolding from his hiding spot and climbing out on top of the rock. He crouches there for a long time, tilting his head, watching how the stranger looks at him with satisfaction and desire. It makes him feel very important, and lovely (not the way his Mother makes him feel, loved for his warmth - no, it's different, it's the first stirrings of ambition in his heart; he finds that he wants it, and he will find that Arthur teaches him to want many things, insatiably, want _want want _there will be no end to his _want_, but he does not understand yet, not yet - ).

"There you are," purrs Green Eyes.

He motions with his hands for him to come down, and now the Son has forgotten all about his Mother's warnings, has forgotten everything in the wake of this new obsession unfolding dangerously in his heart. He picks his way down over the rocks, his movements sure and graceful. He has grown a little; the stubbiness of infancy has become soft and lean. He looks maybe seven years old, but he moves like he has been doing this for ages (he has).

Green Eyes takes only one more step forward, stopping when he sees the way the boy's shoulders stiffen warily. "Steady on," he murmurs, gentle, coaxing. "What's your name? Do you understand me?"

Like an inquisitive bird, the Son tilts his head again, and blinks, his stare vacant of comprehension. "Clearly not. No matter, we'll right that soon enough, won't we?" The stranger drops slowly into a squat so that they are now at eye level. It makes the boy relax and smile shyly, tucking his chin towards his collarbone and watching now from behind his thick dark lashes.

Green Eyes places a hand on his chest and says, slowly, "I am Arthur, England. Do you understand?" He thumps his hand on his chest. "England."

He is beginning to understand. He points one of his little fingers at the man crouched in the sand and tries the name out, letting it stumble clumsily off his tongue: "England."

He is rewarded with a wide smile, and it pleases him greatly, so much so that he takes another few steps forward. "There's a smart lad. Now, you. You." There is very little distance between them now, enough that England can reach his arm out, pointing a finger directly at the child's chest.

The Son frowns slightly, confused, puzzled, stumped by the question. He goes by many names; he doesn't fully understand why this stranger has only one (or two? Arthur? Arthur? Arthur?). He has a name for every tribe of his Mother's children, for every rock and tree and blade of grass, for every star in her Sky and the endless depths of her eyes. He has never considered how to put this into words. He shifts his weight nervously from one foot to the other, bitting his bottom lip. After a long stretch of silence he looks down at his feet and shakes his head violently.

"You don't have a name?" (No, he has many, but in an instant they are all erased, obliterated, smothered because _That's not my name don't you call me that any more I am AMERICA the great not your Son you will kneel you will kneel you will walk or you will die_ \- )

"Well, we can't have that now can we." There is a warmth to these words he cannot understand, warmth enough that he peeks up from behind his curtain of wild curls to see a smile that is real and endeared and affectionate - because there is nothing England loves more than virgin soil, his to name. He takes a step closer, drawn to it, and now when England reaches out a hand, his fingertips brush against the smooth brown skin above the boy's heart.

"How about Alfred? Always fancied that name." He taps lightly for emphasis, and the Son feels heat radiate from where he's touched. "Alfred."

The boy smiles wide and slowly brings his hands up to clasp at the pale one resting against his chest (smaller than his mothers, paler, but rougher too, hard). "Alfred," he repeats, and in the delight he takes in the word, he does not feel that miles away his Mother clutches her heart and moans in her sleep because this is the beginning of the end.

* * *

He begins to sneak away regularly to go see Arthur. He knows that she knows, because with him goes a few of her children for reasons of their own, forming alliances, trading, wary but receptive.

Mother and son don't speak of it; she doesn't ask where he goes for hours at a time, and he pretends not to see the sadness in her face when he leaves. He does not want to see it (he is beginning to resent her for it).

Alfred (because that is his name now, and he tells anyone who asks, loudly, proudly, that his name is Alfred) spends his time with Arthur, learning the language. He is very good at it - Arthur tells him he's a natural, and Alfred preens at the praise and does not see the darkness in the other nation's smile - and soon he is chattering away with Arthur's children. They are quite taken with him; during the day he runs through their encampment while they work, weaving in and out between their legs, making them chase him while he screams with glee. At night, before he leaves to return to his Mother, he sits on their laps and fiddles with their things - compasses with spinning arrows, little silver crosses which he turns over in his hands reverently, jewelry, anything that they will let him to get his eager little fingers on. They call him Little Alfred, Little England, America, and no one but Arthur notices that one day Alfred stares up at him with wonder, and his eyes are gray instead of black.

* * *

"I am coming with you to see the one with the Green Eyes."

She tells him this one day as he is about to leave, and he stops and turns and blinks at her in surprise. Lately they do not speak much at all; she has lapsed into her old silence, and he has begun to lose interest in the tongues of her children (he prefers to speak in English now, to show off how much he has learned, and because Arthur's children tell him he is a smart boy and he loves to think he is smart). He frowns slightly and turns his gray eyes to her and does not notice how she does not meet his gaze anymore but fixates her eyes somewhere over his shoulder (she does not want to believe it, I_ can't believe it, who are you, you were born of my flesh, you were born of me what have you done what have you done to me_ \- ).

"I thought you didn't like them," he says a little snootily, scuffing his bare foot against the ground, his bottom lip jutting out. He has become spoiled by Arthur's attention, because Arthur likes to dote on him and tell him that he is the most special of all of the boys in the world, that he is different from his Mother's children, better. But he cannot help but flush with pleasure when he sees the little smile that curls on her lips - because really he has missed her smile, has missed when she would smile for him - even though it is a sad smile.

"You like them," she says simply. He rushes to her and wraps his arms tight around her waist (he came up to her ribcage now, he is growing, growing, growing and she fears he is growing away from her).

"You'll like them too! I promise. Arthur has taught me many things!" he tells her, excited, tugging on her hand to lead the way. She follows him like a ghost but he takes no heed, glad to fly with her again across the many many miles of their country (it is theirs now, not just hers; it is Alfred's, too).

There is something heavy in the air when they arrive. The camp has grown; it is was Arthur calls a town, now. They call it New England. It is different from any of her children's settlements. She doesn't like it. Arthur's children do not smile at Alfred's mother like they smile at him; they watch the tall, regal woman with blank faces and stony eyes. They leer at her behind her back, offended by her beauty, her height, the width of her shoulders and the strength of her long brown legs. They call her a heathen whore (_godless, you're a godless bitch and you'll burn in hell you'll burn - )._

Alfred hears this, but he does not understand what the words mean.

Arthur is standing at the center of town waiting for them, holding himself like he did the first night they met. Alfred's heart beats excitedly. He is very happy. His two favorite people in the world are finally meeting. He squeezes his mother's hand and it is cold and very still in his. "Mother, this is Arthur. England," he says in a tongue she can understand. To Arthur he says, "This is my Mother. She is the Mother of everything here."

He does not see the way she looks sharply down at him, horrified to hear the foreign language on his tongue - it sounds harsh and poisonous in his sweet mouth. He does not see the look that passes between her and England; hers is like icy fire; his is smug and sure and heavy-lidded with contempt.

"She doesn't seem very happy to meet me," Arthur says jovially. Alfred's eyebrows knit together and his cheeks flush in embarrassment. He pouts up at his Mother and tugs his hand free of hers. "Doesn't she know that her children have already welcomed us onto their land? They've taught us how to plant crops. They trade with us."

Alfred translates, and his Mother's chin tilts upwards in defiance. She is truly a glorious picture, standing a head or two above every man present, a goddess of fire and wind and earth and water. "Not all of them," she says coolly. Alfred doesn't translate this; she notices. "Ask him why he builds walls when we have welcomed him so graciously." When her son hesitates, she says sharply, "Ask him."

He mumbles the question in English and Arthur's eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline.

"Why, for protection, of course."

...

"What does he need protection for? Does he expect my children to attack him during the night?" (She does not mention that they might and that they will, that some of her children share her sentiments and watch and wait because England's children are not the only ones who have a taste for war.) She sneers because she is not young like her son and she is not a fool; she is old and wise and she has watched the habits of wolves for many years and though she has never involved herself in the politics of her children she has seen in their faces deception and greed and cruelty; she can recognize it anywhere. This nation is not looking for friendship. He is not looking for trade. He is not looking to be her ally or ally to her children. He is looking to take from her everything that is hers - _and now you look like him, pale as death, he's stolen you from me, he's stolen you and my children and my land, my country, and you, my son - _.

He rolls his shoulders in a casual shrug but his eyes are like knives. "Of course not. But one never knows what kind of creatures lurk in the dark."

The implication is not clear to Alfred, but his Mother understands perfectly and she bares her teeth. Yes, that is what she expected; these men look at her children and do not see other men. They see beasts. They see cattle. Before she can respond, Arthur has continued, speaking breezily: "The walls are just markers, borders of our town."

…

She scoffs and tosses her long hair over her shoulder. "It is not your right to create borders on land that does not belong to you." She casts her eyes fiercely around at Arthur's children, and they shrink back despite themselves.

Alfred now is very nervous. He is wringing his hands in distress. This is not how he wanted this meeting to go. He does not understand why his Mother is being this way; he has never seen her stand like she is expecting to be attacked, like a wounded animal backed into a corner, the whites of her eyes glowing almost demonic in the darkness; he has never seen her possessive of land she never felt the need to possess (he has never seen her afraid to lose it).

Arthur's smile is a mouthful of teeth. "Your children gave us permission to settle here. They signed a contract, they made a trade. Surely even you must submit to the will of your children… what is a nation if not for their people?"

Alfred does not translate, but he doesn't have to. His Mother turns her head and spits on the ground (no longer hers) and snatches his hand in a grip that frightens him. He tugs at it and she looks down at him and says, "My Son, we are leaving."

"I don't want to," he mutters, pouting. "Mama, you've been unfair. You've been mean! Arthur wants to be friends - "

"He _wants_ what belongs to _me_," she says in a low voice like a growl, the rumble of thunder, of land slides and earth quakes. "Come." And she calls him by one of his old names, and something in him snaps like a rubber band pulled too tight and he wrenches his hand away and darts out of her reach, ducking his head, his eyes glowing bright blue from where he crouches guiltily on English soil.

"Don't call me that!" He is shouting, spitting her language back into her face with such venom that her expression drops suddenly from fury to utter shock. "My name is Alfred!"

England's grin is threatening to split his face in two; Alfred's Mother stares into blue eyes and sees no warmth there anymore and she lets out a wordless moan and turns and flees into the forest (but not before her breath knocks down Arthur's walls like they are match sticks.)

* * *

a/n. somebody made a super great crit that i wanted to address real quick, saying they got kind of a noble savage feel from this, and that wasn't what i was rly going for, i was more trying to convey that the colonists brought a v unique sort of violence with them that was a direct result of western european thought ie privileging private property, a christian view of the earth and ppl as resources to be used, political racism, hyper patriarchal sociopolitical hierarchy, terror tactics, etc. i didnt mean to imply that native peoples were not violent or prone to all of the terrible things that human beings do, but i was trying to give arthur and the english traits that i have read abt as being deeply rooted in western thought specifically. i have changed/removed parts that were pointed out as problematic but i just wanted to add a lil extra side note! if anybody has more comments/crits on this subject (because it is a delicate one and probably i shouldnt be writing it at all considering i dont know nearly enough abt it and yet here i am but i want to do it justice to the best of my ability), pls comment! thnx xoxo


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